As an Google Ads advertiser, this is a good news.

If you performed a Google search last week, you may have noticed that the Google Ads listings are now camouflaged to look much more like organic listings.

Google advertisements on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) are now only differentiated by a small “Ad” icon to the left of the link.

This is no doubt a move by Google to improve CTR (click-through rate) of Google Ads ads. Click-through rate is the ratio of users who click on a specific ad to the number of total users who view the ad. In other words:

As people become increasingly cognizant of online advertising and conditioned to scroll past the paid Google listings to the organic ones, Google has clearly made this update with the intention of getting more people to click on the ads. You may have noticed that over the past few months, Google has been rolling out more and more “Ad Extensions” – essentially additional information included in the Google Ads ads; a companies’ phone number, address, reviews, product lines, and links to various sections of their website, etc.

The goal is to get more people to click on the Google Ads ads instead of the organic listings. As an Google Ads advertiser this is good news, as I expect CTR to increase. A high CTR is one of the key factors in the success of an Google Ads campaign, and makes up 65% of the “quality score” that Google assigns to their advertiser’s campaigns. A high CTR can make your bids cheaper, allowing you to spend less to get more leads/sales from Google Ads.

I’ll be tracking my client’s CTRs closely over the next few weeks to determine a baseline for how this change has effected Google Ads CTR. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions.